Doctor Who and the Temple of Mog Doth
by EJ Ownz You
Summary: A town that isn't a town, a box that isn't a box, a Doctor who isn't a man. A Lovecraftian creature is manipulating space and time and may put the whole of reality in jeopardy, but who is manipulating it? As the barriers between worlds break down, Rose Tyler and John Smith the Doctor/Donna find themselves trapped away from their son, who has, himself, gone missing...
1. Chapter 1

The Firebrand is not what anyone would consider to be a handsome ship. It is, in fact, what most people would describe as a garbage heap held together with bond-o and spite. From a purely objective standpoint it resembles a particularly ugly housefly which has lost it's wings, a roundish, squattish ship painted non-reflective grey. It moves like a fly as well, unfolds two spindly legs and grabs the hull of the derelict SVSF Ontario, flips it's body around to land with a soft thump as the magnetic pads on it's feet attach to the surface.

There are three crew members on board, though only one is currently in the cockpit. She is a thin woman with dark skin, though whether from genetics or exposure to the elements is unclear. Wild white hair has been tamed down somewhat under a red polka dot bandanna, a microphone rig sits loose round the neck of her athletic shirt. Her name is Ra'haal, but nobody but her boss ever calls her that, to everyone else she is Hal.

Another crew member, this one also female but younger, steps into the control room. She's wearing an atmospheric suit, helmet clamped under one arm, a pair of goggles shoved up into her unkempt hair. The name tag on her chest reads Taylor.

"What have we got?" Taylor asks.

"Looks like there's minimal life support and gravity generation." Hal taps a few buttons. "That's weird."

"What?" Taylor leans over the seat to look at the readings.

"Ok, here's where the main engines started failing, see the power drain here? Then they fixed it somehow for awhile, then it goes out again and we don't have anything until..." Hal taps a reading on the screen. "fifty years ago, the whole deck lights up, something accessed the command computer. It ran for 72 minutes and 30 seconds, then shut down again. And here, this is from 9 hours ago. Another power surge. "

"Ok, so someone else has landed and checked this place out." Taylor shrugs.

"Yeah, except there's no record of any airlock being opened, and no external damage- so how did they get in there?"

"Somebody in stasis woke up." Taylor says. "That switches to emergency solar power, right?"

"That's what I thought at first, too." Hal shakes her head. "But there's no record of anything but standard maintenance checks in the deep freeze, far as I can tell they've never been used. And besides, what, somebody came out for awhile, got back in, came out again, and then vanished, all without connecting to any registered power supply?"

"What were they carrying in the cargo bay?" Taylor asks. "Somebody had to still be on that ship somewhere."

"Most of it is books, a few crates of antique furniture, stuff from an old school on Oraxacon Beta. And I do mean old, you're talking gas powered Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks here."

"Wait, I thought the ship took off from Balatraz station."

"It did." Hal says. "They transferred the shipment there."

"Why?"

"Doesn't say." Hal taps a few buttons, shrugs.

"So it was on it's way to a collector?" Taylor asks.

"Man, don't you ever read the briefings?" Hal sighs.

"Hey, I do the computers, that's all I care about." Taylor says. "Dave deals with all that other stuff."

"All what stuff?" The third crew member appears, wearing a suit identical to Taylor's save for the name tag.

There is a click and beep from the control panel and Hal grunts. "Alright, we're in. Have fun, you two."

Dave and Taylor put their helmets on, drop into the air lock booth. Dave secures the hatch into the Firebrand and triggers the release sequence. A red light flashes three times then stays on, ten seconds later exterior vents open and a blast of pressurized non-volatile gas forces all of the existing air away. The vents close with a soft whirring sound, bright lights sweep over them, sterilizing the exterior of the suits.

The adjoining airlocks slide open, and the two step into the SVSF Ontario, the first people to set foot on the ship in at least fifty years. The corridor they have entered is dark, the lights on their helmets send long silver shafts into the shadows.

"Can you get us some light?" Dave asks.

"Uh...yeah, hang on a sec." Hal says.

There is a soft rumble as she activates the engines on the Firebrand, gently rotating the larger ship to bring their side in line with a nearby star. Sunlight sweeps in through the windows like a time-lapse video, settles into bright strips.

"So, what's the story with this stuff?" Taylor asks. "Hal said it's antique furniture down in the cargo bay. You got a buyer set up or something?"

"Maybe." Dave says. "It depends on exactly what's down there. If it's what I think it is, then it's worth a great deal to the right person."

"And you think it's..." Taylor prompts him.

"There's this mythical- supposedly mythical- place. A town or a school or a hospital on Earth in the 1900s...the details vary, but the basic idea is that the people wherever this is, was, were somehow using what looked like ancient technology in a very advanced way. Medicine that was hundreds of years before it's time, teleporting over vast distances, possibly even bending the laws of space and time."

Taylor shrugs. "There are lots of stories like that. What makes these so special?"

"Eh, PR mostly. The guy who wrote the first stories said he'd found or bought or been given this diary that described all these things. Of course, he wrote that as well, and distributed copies...but there are some people who think that there was a _real_ diary that the fake one was based on."

"Ok, so what does that have to do with a bunch of junk from an old school? If this guy had some document, wouldn't it have been in his house on Earth when he died?"

"Ah, here's the thing-" Dave grins. "This school we've got boxed up in here, it's from one of those recreation villages. They went and bought up tons of old estate stuff...including, according to certain sources, a lot which was rumored to contain the original diary. Unfortunately nobody ever found out, since the shipment was lost."

A deep moan echoes down the hall as if in response to his words. It is followed by a heavy twang and several soft popping sounds. The hull of the ship singing as it's dark side warms in the light. It happens in almost all ships, though the ambient noise is usually enough to drown it out, and Dave and Taylor are used to hearing it but still they stop, turn to look down into the shadows.

They have come to the control room, the door is closed and locked, the release button dark. Dave pulls a panel from the wall to expose the manual door crank, a large gear with a handle that folds out with a squeak. The mechanism resists at first but he puts his shoulder to it and the crank turns, the door slowly slides open.

The control deck is dark, no windows here. A yellow light is blinking on one of the consoles and Taylor walks over, presses a button beside a monitor. The screen lights up, a cursor blinking in the top left corner.

"Auxiliary console has power." Taylor sits down at the control seat and begins throwing commands at the machine in rapid fire keystrokes. "You got that re-rout done yet?"

"You're good to go." Dave says, closing the panel.

Several of the other screens come up, flash through rapidly scrolling code, go dark, come back on again. Two of them display blank screens in a rather painful shade of blue, the third shows a pattern of rotating geometric shapes as the operating system boots up, then sweeps to a menu.

"Ok, we're in." Taylor says.

Taylor works on the system for another minute or so as Dave walks around the control room, looking at the various panels. A rumble from below deck indicates activation of the secondary power source, the atmospheric system and lights come up. Dust swirls into the air in the control room and is immediately sucked away.

"Alright, we'll have full gas exchange in about fifteen minutes. Interior temperature 85 degrees Fahrenheit and falling." Taylor says. "That's weird, I can't access the ship's log. There's not a cable unplugged over there or something, is there?"

Dave obligingly checks the wiring again. "Nope, problem must be further down."

"Hal, can you access the log from there?" Taylor asks.

"Ah...no, looks like there's a break in the line somewhere. Let me see...OK, logging box is down one deck, almost right below you. Conduit runs through an access tube, you've got an entrance by the door there." Hal's voice, hollow in their helmets. "You want the yellow line."

Dave finds the access, which opens into a narrow corridor lit by bands of bluish light. Bundles of colour coded wires and tubes run down both walls, a series of handles is set into what is currently the ceiling. He finds the yellow conduit and presses his signal sensor probe against it. A glowing rectangle seems to materialize in front of his face as his helmet display activates, a flat line running horizontally down it's length.

"Yeah, we got no signal. Looks OK up here, goes down a floor up ahead, I'm gonna check over there." He walks along, tapping the wire with his probe occasionally.

He stops at the intersection and looks down, the lights are bright for perhaps a hundred yards then dim abruptly for a section before failing completely. He can feel himself being pulled straight down into the shadows, on low power the specific directional gravity doesn't function and he is simply being drawn toward the core of the ship. The handles that run along one side of this corridor now look like a ladder down into a well.

"There's definitely a break in power down here, lights are out." He swings out over the void and begins to climb down, watching the yellow line.

There is a crackle in his ear and he stops. "Come again?"

"...losing your signal." Hal's broken voice.

"I've got him." Taylor's voice is clear. "It's the shielding down there. Dave, switch to OC554, I can pick you up here and boost it."

"Rodger." Dave switches his audio/visual feed. "That better?"

"Uh...yeah, reading you. You're good to go." Hal says.

He starts to climb again, passes the dim lights and steps into darkness. The air seems to get colder, press in around him, though he knows it's just his imagination, he can't feel anything through the suit. He tilts his head down, sending a shaft of light into the blackness. There is a flash of dull metallic light at the end, the floor of the next junction.

Dave drops off the bottom of the ladder, lands with a soft thump. The yellow conduit curves to run along the wall, as he looks the lights on his helmet sweep down.

"Well, that's your problem right there." Dave says.

"Woah." Taylor is obviously watching his feed in the control room. "What the hell is that?"

"I dunno." Dave frowns as he tries to make sense of what he's looking at, starts to walk slowly forward.

The corridor shortly ahead of him has been invaded by what look like silvery roots, some of them thick as his torso. He pulls out his bioscanner and passes it through the air but gets no response, whatever this stuff is, if it was ever alive it's not anymore. He can see that it's either eaten through or broken several of the conduits, his yellow one included.

"Ok, I'm gonna keep going." He says. "See if I can just pull the box, it's gonna be a royal pain to run direct connect through here."

The ship's logger is set into a large, heavily reenforced box which is almost impossible to penetrate without a key. Dave has one, but as it turns out he doesn't need it, the box is sitting open.

"What in the world..." Taylor says.

"Logger's still inside." Dave says, leaning in and detaching wires.

"Yeah, this place is super weird." Taylor says. "Where are all those...whatever they are, vine things, where are they coming from?"

"Um..." Dave looks around, the logger clamped under one arm. "looks like they've come through this shaft over here, they're so thick I can't even see down there. Where's this go?"

"Ends at Cargo Bay 4." Hal says.

"That's where those antiques are, right?" Taylor asks.

"Yeah." Dave says. "Looks like maybe quarantine failure. I've never seen anything like this, though."

"Where's that stuff from?" Taylor asks.

"Oraxacon Beta." Hal's voice.

"They've got lots of fungus there." Dave says. "I bet that's what this is, it probably went crazy in the atmpsphere here."

"Is it dangerous?" Taylor asks.

"I don't think so, and even if it was, it's dead dead." He taps on one of the vines. "Hollow, desiccated, just a shell."

"Keep your suits on, and I want level 5 decontamination." Hal says.

"Yeah, yeah." Dave says, turning back toward the access he'd come through. "I'm heading back up there, you got something to hook this into?"

"Of course." Taylor says.

Back on the control deck, Taylor plugs the logger box into a port on the main console. One of the large screens comes up, displays a menu for a split second before dissolving into a flurry of CMYK boxes.

"Drive is corrupted." Taylor says. "I can clean it up some, but it's going to take awhile."

"You do that, I'm going to go check out the cargo bay." Dave says. "Remember, if the serial killer comes while I'm away, don't run up the stairs."

"Oh, would you just go." Taylor laughs, waving him away.

She pulls a thin black box out of one of her pockets, a narrow plastic shell with several ports along one side and three lights and a power button on the other. Taylor attaches the data extractor to the corrupted logger and turns it on, the bottom light pulses to let her know it's working but the other two stay dark, when all of them light up and hold it will be done. She puts it down on the top of the logger and walks over to look at the various other pieces of equipment in the control room.

The data extractor beeps and she goes back, two of the lights are on and glowing, the third flickers.

"Alright, I'm looking at our history here, still waiting on video..." She says. "Situation normal at launch, we have the landing and pickup here...ok, hang on, there are some errors showing up. Lets see...that's two weeks out and there are some power outages reported around the cargo bay- it got so bad here they had to re-rout the door systems. Ooh, and there's some nav-com weirdness going on here, we've got a spontaneous course change, lets see the log for the repairs..."

Taylor taps a few buttons, looks at the column of results.

"Wow. Looks like the nav-com went bad, they had to replace the whole unit. That's really unusual, they normally show errors right away, this one was fine until a month after they grabbed their shipment." She shakes her head.

"That stuff I saw down in the logger room must have gotten into it." Dave says.

"You'd think there would be some note about that." Taylor frowns, brings up the comments on the log. "If it was there, they couldn't see it."

"Microscopic spores?" Dave asks.

"Could be." Taylor says.

"Great. You two are definitely not getting back on my ship without being hosed down." Hal says.

"What about the new system?" Dave asks.

"Uh...here we go, two weeks and it starts to go bad, same story. Lets see...we have a switch to manual navigation here, there's a docking request but...then it's canceled here, no reason given. Course alteration to..." Taylor frowns. "Nothing- I mean, there's nothing mapped there. Out in the middle of nowhere, far as I can tell. Engines failed and she's been drifting out here ever since."

"So what happened to the crew?" Dave asks.

"I have no idea. No emergency pods launched, no note of crew member deaths." Taylor frowns. "Nothing in the log that would indicate some sort of system failure."

"Well, I'm at the cargo deck where this all started, lets see what's inside." Dave says. "Yeah, I see where they jacked the door, I've got an open/closed switch here and...it works."

The double doors slide open and Dave is looking into the darkness of the cargo bay. "Lights are out."

"You should be able to open the viewshields from the manual control box, you'll have a crank. Should get enough light in there to see by, I can pull you around if I need to." Hal says.

Dave steps into the dark room, which feels uncomfortably like a cave. He pulls a flashlight off of his belt and it joins the beams on his helmet.

He glances down and pauses. "Can you see this?"

"What is that?" Taylor asks.

"It looks like..." He pulls a probe from his belt and leans down to press it into the material. "It is. It's snow."

"It's what?"

"Snow. As in the white stuff that falls from the sky in winter."

"Atmospheric controls must be on the fritz." Taylor says.

The room is full of large shipping containers, easily thirty feet long, made of heavy corrugated metal. Covered with snow they have taken on the appearance of a town draped in frigid darkness.

They bear various stamps, stickers, and inventory sheets, and Dave stops at the nearest one to look at the invoice.

"What's that say?" Taylor asks.

"Beds, folding, boys dorm, 150 count." Dave reads.

"Sounds exciting." Taylor says.

" Any luck with the log?" Dave asks.

"It's working, but it's taking forever. Whatever did this jacked those files up bad. I mean, half of this looks like it's been re-encryped somehow. It's like it was altered to work on a completely different system, but only the voluntary logs, not the automatic ones."

"Sounds like somebody was looking for something." Dave comments.

"Control booth should be straight ahead." Hal's voice comes through his speaker.

There is a line of containers blocking his way, Dave turns to go around them and stops. The huge boxes here have been scattered in a loose curve as though from an impact, though it must have been some time ago as the snow drifts high and undisturbed around them. The same vine like substance he'd seen earlier has grown from the containers, though now rising from several feet of snow the impression is more that of an ancient forest. The long tendrils have arched up into a dome, branching out to form a delicate looking lattice. The gaps between the thin branches are pale with a thin layer of ice and snow.

"Are you getting this?" Dave asks.

"Hal?" Taylor asks. "You ever seen anything like it?"

"Beats me." Hal says.

"I'm going to go check out that dome." Dave has to move slowly in the snow, finds a large gap and clears a path through.

He steps in and stops, for a moment feeling a spinning sense of unreality. He's not sure what he was expecting to be here, but it certainly wasn't this.

Outside the dome is the cargo bay of the Ontario in the year 2255. Inside, it appears to be a city circa early 1900s Earth, decorated for Christmas with wreathes and ancient electric lights. It is night, snow drifts from a sky heavy with clouds.

"Wow. Can you guys see this?"

His speaker responds with a burst of static. He frowns, turns around to look at the wall behind him...and there is no wall. He walks back a little way, hoping that it's been hidden by a projection, but the city just seems to go on.

Up in the control room, Taylor frowns and taps her transmitter. "Dave?"

"What happened?" Hal asks.

"I dunno, I lost him." Taylor shakes her head. "Must be interference from something in the cargo bay. You getting anything?"

"Nnooo..." Hal says. "Wait, I've got something here...there's some sort of power flux but..."

"I'm going to go down there, check it out." Taylor says.

"Roger that."

Dave considers the options. The entire cargo bay could have been altered, intentionally or not, to project some sort of interactive game. But...he frowns slightly, even new systems can't fool the sensors on the suit, not without hacking into the thing and these suits are guarded more heavily against that than normal. According to his independently functioning equipment it is at it appears to be- the snow is snow, the air is cold, the gas and gravity register as though they are on a planet.

He could be under the influence of some psychotropic, which would certainly explain why his suit sensors are working. Dave thinks back carefully, shouldn't there be some sort of inconsistency in his memory if that were the case? But the last few days all line up perfectly, right up to stepping into this strange little town.

He's not prepared to completely rule out a hallucination or dream, but if he's considering all possibilities, then the last one is...Well, the last one is that he's somehow stepped through into another place and time.

He starts to walk again, the boots of his space suit crunching softly on the snow. The road ahead is brighter, and after a few blocks he has come to an area filled with closed cafés and small boutique stores. There is a small park beyond, he can see the lighted windows of more stores on the other side.

The snow in the park had been disturbed at some point the day before, the new snow has a distinctly lumpy and ragged look. There is something else in the park, he realizes, wonders how he hadn't noticed the box right away. It's perhaps nine feet tall and half as wide, painted a vibrant deep blue.

It looks out of place, but familiar. He approaches slowly, when he is at the edge of the park a light mounted on the top comes on, the lit words above the door come to life, followed by a yellow glow from the windows.

"Police Public Call Box?" Dave reads aloud, then laughs. "Nice try, but that's the wrong model."

The box is the only thing that looks as though it's been inserted from the wrong time period, though he's not completely sure of his accuracy when it comes to the sort of items he's seen so far. He casts his eye around again, stops with a frown.

Just down the street, at an intersection, he can see what he recognizes as an actual police phone from the 1920s, a tall pole with a small rounded box mounted at a comfortable height for an average adult. Now, that just confuses things even more.

He starts across the park, in places the snow here has piled up to his knees and he finds himself breathing hard as he wades closer to the box.

Dave reaches out and puts a gloved hand on the box. He can't feel it, but he can see the texture of the wood, the slightly chipped and faded paint.

There is a squeaking crunch behind him and he turns, expecting to find a person or perhaps a dog. What he sees instead is something he registers as a snake or worm rising up out of the snow. It has no discernible head, but the rounded end waves menacingly in the air. Two more come up on either side, completely blocking his escape.

Dave steps back, hits the box, presses himself against it as he stares at the things which are clearly about to attack. The middle one lashes forward, it's end opens out into a wide mouth, plunges toward him. He lifts his hands defensively, turning his head away and closing his eyes.

The wood behind him drops away, someone grabs the back of his suit and yanks him hard enough to make him topple back and fall over. The door slams shut again, the thing slams into it with a heavy thunk. It pulls back, shakes it's head end, twists round as though looking at the others. The three of them sink back under the surface, waiting.

Taylor stops at the cargo bay door. It's standing open, she shines her light inside. All she sees are shipping crates, no snow. She walks into the shadows, the beam of her flashlight sweeping around.

"I thought there was snow in there." Hal says.

"There was, it looked like there was..."

Taylor walks down a row of containers, after several minutes she comes to the part of the cargo bay where Dave had seen the snowy dome. All that is here now, however, is unbroken floor surrounded by the scattered crates. Several of them have burst open, spilling their contents, most of which appear to be boxed books and office furniture. The control booth for the cargo bay is visible against the back wall.

"There's nothing here." Taylor says. "Nothing at all."


	2. Chapter 2

"Rockin' around the Christmas tree..."

Rose groans and rolls over, slaps the radio alarm off. Murky gray light filters in through the windows, she doesn't have to look to know it's been snowing again.

She yawns, puts on her robe and slippers and pads down the stairs. The house is cold, she stops to turn the thermostat up before filling and switching on the electric kettle.

There are footsteps from the floor above her, a few moments later John Smith appears, hair more wild than normal, phone pressed against his ear.

"Yeah, yeah...no, it's Ok, I was about to get up, anyway." He tilts the phone away from his mouth as he yawns.

"Is that Pete?" Rose asks.

"Here, talk to your mother." John offers the phone out to her.

"Merry Christmas!" Their son says when she puts the speaker to her ear.

"It's not Christmas, yet." Rose laughs.

"Yeah, well Happy Almost Christmas, then." Pete says. "You guys did remember to water the tree, right?"

"Yes, your tree is fine." Rose says. "It'll still be here when you get back."

"Yeah, that's why I'm calling, the flight is probably going to be delayed, there's a big storm that's supposed to come in and they're trying to get people to transfer to other flights, it would mean staying here another three days. Mr and Mrs Russo said it's fine."

"Ok." Rose opens the fridge and pulls out a pint of milk. "I don't see that being a problem. John, you don't mind if he stays in Italy for a little longer?"

"Tell him he can stay there, we'll rent out his room." John says, walking over to the garden door and pulling the curtain aside to glance out at half a foot of fresh snow. "And I'm going to send his presents to disadvantaged children in Africa."

"It's fine." Rose laughs. "When will you be getting back?"

"Um, January 5th, I think, I'll have to talk to the people at the airport."

Someone knocks at the front door.

John Smith frowns, it's 8:45 in the morning, who on Earth is calling unannounced?

He can see the shadow of the person on the other side through the narrow frosted glass window beside the doorway. It's small, a child, maybe 10 years old. He quickly takes the final steps and opens the door.

In the kitchen behind him, Rose frowns and lowers the phone as the signal goes dead.

"Paper, sir?" A boy dressed in several layers of coats, holding the flap of his bag open like an awning to protect the contents from the light snow that has started to fall again.

"Ah-" This is not the city that was here when he went to sleep, and it isn't the city he saw through the back of the house.

Across the road should be a line of suburban homes with snowmen in the yards and shoveled driveways, cast in gray morning light.

Instead, he is looking out at stone rowhouses, the snow on their roofs sparkling in midday light. Smoke drifts up from narrow chimneys. The air smells like cold and burning things- wood and coal fires, oily exhaust from early automobiles, food cooking. There are a few people out and about, bundled up against the cold. 1920's, he thinks.

"Yes, I'm sorry, can you tell me what day it is?"

"December 22nd , sir." The boy says.

"And, what year?"

The paperboy gives him a slightly suspicious look. "1920, sir."

John wants to ask where they are, but realizes that is a totally inappropriate question as he apparently lives here. He wants a paper, but contemporary currency is going to be useless to the child. "Hang on a minute. Rose?"

Rose has vaguely registered that her husband is talking to someone at the door, but she's been trying to figure out why her phone has gone dead. "What."

"Can you get that blue suit from the closet for me?" He doesn't dare turn around, if this is a quantum mechanism shifting his attention could literally alter whatever is happening outside.

"Get it yourself." She power cycles her phone, hissing with annoyance. "I thought we had this thing fixed."

"Rose, I need you to go get me my blue suit. Now. Please." He speaks in the soft but firm tone he only uses when he's giving a direct order.

Rose looks up slowly, his body is blocking most of the doorway but something is not right about the view of the street. She comes down the short hall and opens the closet, the blue suit is in a clothing bag at the very end of the bar, behind a reflective silver parka and the plush dinosaur costume their son had worn for six months when he was ten. She unhooks the hangar, unzips the bag.

The suit has not been worn since John arrived, and she had an unexpected wash of emotions as the smell of the Tardis wafts out. He turns to take the clothing when she comes up behind him, she's offering out her arm but freezes when she catches sight of outside.

John fishes in the jacket pocket hopefully, pulls out a handful of change. He sorts through and finds several coins that were minted in 1915 and offers them out. The boy drops them into a pouch and carefully counts out a few pennies, but John waves them away.

"Thank you, sir. Ma'am" The boy hands John a paper and tips his hat. "Happy Christmas."

He turns and trots off down the street. Rose pushes into the doorway so she can look through.

"What is going on?" She asks.

"I'm not entirely sure." John looks down at the paper. "Stokers Guest? Odd name for a town. Lets see..." He opens the paper and skims the headlines. "Oh, look at that, Christmas play at the elementary school used live animals, two chickens are still missing... auto crash on Main street... someone researching rodent behavior has leased the house that used to be owned by a person named Adrian Kelsey..."

"John." Rose says.

"Hm?" He turns the page.

"It's 1920 out there."

John doesn't answer, he's reading something with his brow drawn down.

"John?"

"What?" He says vaguely.

"John!"

The power goes out, plunging the house into shadow. The room abruptly feels smaller, Rose and John turn to find a wall at the end of the entryway, the rest of the house has either vanished or been cut off.

"Great." Rose says. "What are we going to do?"

John is still reading the paper, and she elbows him in annoyance. "Pay attention!"

"Yes, right, well there's no point in hanging around here." He drops the bathrobe and starts dressing.

Rose can't see any alternative, she finds a long coat in the closet and puts it on, slides her feet into her winter boots.

They are on a street lined with row houses, people bustle about with parcels, ignoring the newcomers. A group of children runs past, all of them red faced and covered in snow.

After a few minutes they come to the business district, all of the shop windows are decorated with holiday displays. Rose is watching a little electric train and Ferris wheel and bumps into John when he stops.

She looks up, they have come to a small park which bears the scars of a recent snowball fight, and standing in the center is the thing that has made him freeze.

The Tardis, it's roof coated in a thin layer of snow, light on top glowing brightly.

"Oh my God." Rose murmurs.

They start across the park, are halfway to the Tardis when something moves under the snow, almost knocking Rose off of her feet. She stops, looking around, John turns to look at her. In the silence when their feet stop shuffling they can both hear a soft creaking and sliding under the surface, as though there are snakes moving in the snow.

"What is that?" Rose takes a step closer to John, watching the unbroken top layer.

"I don't know." John takes her hand, pulls her toward the Tardis. "Come on."

Something bursts up out of the snow, Rose's first thought is of a giant snake poised to strike, but the thing doesn't have any discernible head. A worm, maybe, or the tentacle of a colossal squid. It is immediately followed by another, the two arch up above them, waving menacingly.

Several people on the sidewalk scream, the sparse crowd mills about in panic and confusion before dispersing.

John shoves Rose toward the box, breaks into a run behind her. Another of the worms snaps up in front of them, cutting them off, then another. In seconds they are surrounded, but they don't strike, simple wave around.

"What are they doing?" Rose asks. "Why aren't they moving?"

"Hey! Over here!"

Rose and John both turn and see a man, it has to be the Doctor, he's waving the sonic screwdriver. The snakes spot him as well, orient on him and move forward. The Doctor bolts, giving Rose and John an opening into the ship.

"They're-" Rose tries to protest as the things shoot off after the Doctor, but John has her arm in a vice grip and is pulling her toward the door.

She sees the Doctor pitch the screwdriver and has a sudden and horrifying flashback to a scene in Jurassic Park as the nearest snake creature turns it's head briefly to watch the screwdriver pass but stays focused on it's living prey.

"Get in the Tardis!" This comes in sterio from both John and the Doctor.

The head of the worm opens outward like a flower blooming, a huge round mouth filled with a cluster of smaller wiggling tedrils. The Doctor pulls something from his pocket and throws it into the gaping maw, the thing closes around it and there is a flash of light, it twists upward and then falls back, either dead or stunned.

For a second, Rose thinks he's going to make it all the way to the Tardis, reaches out a hand for his to pull him in. His fingers brush hers and then another of the worms explodes upward from the snow, mouth wide open, Rose gets a glimpse of his shocked face before he is gone.

"No!" She's back out of the Tardis, vaguely aware of John trying unsuccessfully to grab her jacket and stop her.

The worm is having trouble getting the Doctor down, it thrashes it's head back and forth several times, it's mouth opens again and it shudders then snaps sharply and spits him out. It pulls back, tilts as if considering, the Doctor is moving again, staggering to his feet. The mouth opens again and the tendrils shoot out, wrap around the Doctor. They brighten, pulsing with energy, the Doctor writhes in pain.

Rose runs forward and slams into the thing with her shoulder hard as she can. The worm jerks slightly, feeling her but not perturbed.

"Stop it! Let him go!" Rose kicks the rubbery body but her trainer is completely ineffective, she needs some sort of weapon.

"Look out!" John grabs her shoulder and moves her aside, she registers a flash of silver and then the worm screams in pain and lets go of the Doctor.

John tries to pull the longsword out of it's body to take another swing, but he'd misjudged the resistance and now the thing is burried to the hilt and locked in place by tissue which is oozing bright blue, acrid smelling liquid. It seems to be enough to deter the thing, however, as it retreats into the snow.

The Doctor is still moving, trying to get up. Rose runs over, slipping on the broken chunks of snow and ice, grabs him by the arm and helps him to his feet. She can see he's in pain, and confused, though she's not sure whether the latter is from shock or from seeing two people who should be completely inaccessable in another dimension.

"That's...that's not me, is it?" He manages

"No." Rose tugs him toward the Tardis, he's heavy and uncoordinated. "John! Help me!"

"Oh, good..that would have been...something. I dunno." The Doctor gets an arm around John's shoulders.

"Bad, that would have been bad. But it's bad, anyway." John kicks the door of the Tardis open and then ducks out from under the Doctor to close and lock it behind them.

"Ah, yeah, I suppose it is." The Doctor's legs go out from under him, Rose goes down with him to keep him from crashing to the floor. "Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Don't bother, she's not going anywhere. Locked down. No idea why. Thought she was having a hissy fit but I guess not. Think we're stuck here. Those things can't get in."

John takes his hands off the console, turns to look at the Doctor. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, you always say that." The Doctor shakes his head. "Have to wonder what exactly you keep apologizing for."

"Ssh." Rose says.

The Doctor chuckles, winces. "Don't you tell me to hush, I get to have dying words, you know."

"Stop it, you're not dying." Rose says.

"Yes I am." The Doctor says. "It got me good. Oh, lets see, last words..."

"Shut up, you'll be fine. You'll just regenerate, right?" Rose says.

The Doctor looks like he's about to answer, but his lungs are filling with fluid and he ends up coughing instead.

"No." John says.

"What? Of course he will, he's..." Rose says, but her voice fades at John's expression.

"Not this time. Twelve faces, that's it. No more. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It shouldn't end this way." John says.

Rose feels tears well in her eyes, her lower lip is trembling but she forces it to stay steady enough to manage words. "No, no he's the Doctor. He's got a way around it. He has to. He always does."

"Rose, you have to let go." The Doctor's voice is low and choked.

"No! You're not going to die, you hear me!" Rose almost shouts.

"No, Rose, you have to let go." The Doctor's voice has gotten notably more clear and he actually manages to wrench himself partly out of her grasp. "I can't regenerate if you're touching me."

"Oh! Oh! Sorry!" Rose scoots away.

"What?" John says.

The console room flashes bright with golden light, ionic bonds breaking and re-forming, atoms rearranging themselves.

"What!" John yelps.

"Oh, thank God." Rose gasps, grabs the Doctor again from behind in a relieved hug. "I thought you were dead!"

The Doctor pats her hand. "Oh, oh I've got it. 'You've killed me again, Rose Tyler.' Yep, that's what I should have said."

Rose jerks in surprise and leans around to look at the Doctor's face. "Doctor!"

"What? To soon?"

"You're a girl."

"Hm? So I am." The Doctor runs her hands over the front of her body, now clothed in an incredibly ill fitting suit. "That's a new one."

"You can't do that!" John finally manages to put words together.

"What? Of course I can. It happens all the time, when you're rebuilding every cell in your body from the ground up something like secondary sexua-"

"I meant regenerate!" John waves her to a stop.

The Doctor now looks honestly baffled. "What ever makes you say that?"

"Time Lord's 101? That part about 12 regenerations? You know, little things like that." John walks over and drops down to look the Doctor in the face.

"Gallifrey needed me for a minute, decided it would be best if I didn't kick off before they got what they wanted."

"Gallifrey is gone." John says.

"Nuh-uh, just parked at the end of time. Most of 'em are still jerks, though."

John laughs, rocks back and rolls to his feet. "Alright, alright, we're going to have a very long talk later. Come on, you need to go lie down."

"Yeah, I think...I think that would be good." The Doctor pulls her shoes off and reaches up, makes a grasping motion at him with both hands.

John pulls her to her feet, for a second it looks like she's going to fall over and he holds her shoulders steady.

"Oh, my center of gravity is so low." The Doctor wiggles her hips, grabs the pants to keep them from falling off. "And I'm all...loose."

John releases his grip cautiously, then grabs her shoulders again. The Doctor looks back and forth between him and Rose. "How did you two get here?"

"There was a-" Rose starts.

"It's not important." John says firmly. "Come on."

"But-" The Doctor shakes her head, winces as the movement makes her go dizzy.

"Nope, not important." He repeats, catching the Doctor as she loses her balance and scooping her up.

"I can walk." The Doctor protests.

"I know." John says, but doesn't put her down.

Rose follows as he carries the Doctor through the door at the rear of the console room, down the hall and into the study. John starts to put the Doctor down but she tightens her hands around his shoulders and makes a noise, and he stops.

"Ok, well I guess there's not really much I can do, anyway." He shifts his grip on the Doctor and sits down, arranges his long legs on the cushion.

"Is it safe in here? I mean, while she's asleep." Rose says quietly. "My pants are soaked."

"Yeah, it should be fine, the console room is probably closed." John wiggles, pokes the Doctor until she moves her sharp elbow from his stomach.

Rose finds that the halls have shifted but she can find her way, she finds most of her old wardrobe in the room the Doctor calls the closet, is slightly surprised that the pants still fit. She'd been feeling vaguely out of shape lately, but apparently that's not the case. Something about being a mom does that to you.

That thought brings up an image of Pete and she frowns. This isn't a matter of just miles or years away, one or possibly both parties have moved between dimensions. And that, Rose finds dry shoes and slips them on, that is a problem.

"What do you think, are we screwed?" Rose asks.

The Tardis makes a sound Rose has always thought of as a shrug.

Rose finds the kitchen and finally has something of breakfast, though between spent adrenaline and the worry now pushed to the front of her mind she isn't very hungry. She wants to go talk to John, but he seems to have committed himself to staying with the Doctor until whenever she wakes up, which Rose can't really make herself feel angry at him for.

She wanders around aimlessly, the Tardis has either grown or rearranged herself so that Rose keeps finding unfamiliar passages and hallways that lead to rooms she's never seen before.

She pushes through a set of double doors and stops, blinking in surprise. She's pretty sure there was never a video arcade in the Tardis before. Two walls in the dim, neon lit room are lined with bulky old video game machines, she can hear Pac-Man chomping away and what she thinks is the theme for Mortal Combat. The long far wall has several pods that she recognizes as FIGS, fully interactive game systems, there's a DDR setup and two large flat TV screens with a long couch in front of them. She can see a handfull of controllers scattered on the coffee table among brightly coloured magazines and walkrthrough, square old NES and Atari controllers, the trident designs from the systems she'd played as a teen, a few strangely shaped button studded gadgets, and what looks suspiciously like a modified Power Glove.

"Did he have kids in here?" Rose asks.

The TV screens come up in response to her voice, the room fills with a high pitched midi that is familiar but takes Rose a moment watching the intro screen to place, apparently whoever was in here last was playing the original Legend of Zelda. The TV that isn't attached to this game system shows a rotating pattern of intricate circular shapes, a screen saver. Rose looks around and finds a remote, turns the volume on the game down all the way.

She looks at the remote, the buttons are labeled and she tries the one that says 'local'. A box pops up with a loading icon while 'searching' flashes, Rose wonders what kind of media the Tardis could possibly find in 1920. Newspapers and old film reels?

'Exterior feed unavailable' finally comes up, and the loading screen is replaced with a menu screen, bright thumbnail images on the lower half, white printed text on the top gives her a list of categories. She's apparently accessed the internal storage of the Tardis, she'd never really thought about the ship accessing broadcasts and saving them but it's not particularly surprising.

Rose wonders if the video feed from the Tardis is here somewhere, she searches the screen and finds an icon in circular gallifreyan, when she hovers the pointer finger over it the translation 'login' appears. Ok, she thinks, she might as well try that, the system here looks smart enough not to let her mess anything up.

When she selects the login option more Gallifreyan scrolls across the screen, several characters lock together into a pattern she's fairly sure forms her name, then she is back on the media select screen. There is a new tab now, though it's labeled in Gallifreyan and doesn't translate. When she clicks on it she is presented with rows of labeled thumbnail images which expand to videos that must be from the exterior sensors, some of them are flyovers, others were obviously taken when the Tardis was parked.

"Is there a way to see outside, right now?" Rose asks.

The display obligingly splits into a four way view, she's looking now out at the winter city. It's snowing again, the disturbed surface of the park is fast smoothing over. A group of children run past, she can hear them shouting and laughing. A dog wanders by a minute later and starts to lift it's leg on the corner of the Tardis, then thinks better of it. Shoppers are back on the sidewalk, more of them now, most of them carrying bags and parcels. Everyone seems to have forgotten the events that couldn't have taken place more than 90 minutes prior.

She decides the only halfway useful thing she can do right now is keep an eye on the town outside through the monitors. Watching shoppers walk by isn't terribly interesting, she turns the volume up enough so she'll notice if something starts to happen and picks up a slick interactive magazine titled The Wild and the Weird.

The magazine notices her attention and begins to play a video article about a missing space freighter called the Ontario, which vanished crew and all. According to the wild haired human host, official records listed the Ontario as simply being lost, but onofficial sources state that distress signals came from the crew claiming some sort of alien creature was taking over the ship.

Rose waves her hand over the page and it skips to the next article, something about a living suitcase that eats people, this is followed by an account of 'the man in the blue box' translated from something dug out of an ancient Chinese temple, an interview with someone claiming to have been abducted by talking tomatoes and given the secret to universal peace which he was not to reveal unless local law enforcement agreed to drop all his parking fines, and a rather lengthy piece explaining in needlessly complicated language that in order to fly all one must do is throw themselves at the ground and miss.

Time passes, Rose eventually breaks down and starts playing video games, the fire in the study flickers over the still forms of John Smith and the Doctor.

The ambient sound of the Tardis shifts, the lights in the study come up slightly as the Doctor blinks awake. There are a few seconds of complete and surreal confusion at the discovery of the other person on the couch before senses arrange themselves enough to realize there really is only one Doctor in the room.

"John Smith." The Doctor says slowly, sitting up and looking down, running her hands over her chest.

"Mm?" He answers without opening his eyes.

"I'm a girl."

"Mm-hm."

"When did that happen?"

"That depends." John sits up, rolls his stiff shoulders around. "When is it now?"

"Ah...eight...something." The Doctor peers at the clock over the mantle. "How'd you get here?"

"We came through our front door." John says.

"We?"

"Rose is here somewhere."

"Ok...you came through your door into...what? The Tardis?"

"No, no, the town out there." John says. "We found the Tardis, then some sort of worms or snakes came up out of the snow."

"Right, right, I remember that...vaguely...hm, this is a bigger problem than I thought, then, if it's ripping inter-dimensional portals. I need to find some clothes that fit, then we can see what's going on out there."

"Doctor," John puts a hand on her arm. "Rose and I, we have a son."

"Congratulations, how old is he?"

"18, he's in Italy right now, will be for...well, twelve days from when we left, our time."

"Plenty of time to sort things out." The Doctor smiles.

"You know it doesn't work that way." John says.

"Oh, bah, it'll be fine. You got here, we can get you back. Can't close a door so tight you can't get it back open."

"How did you manage to get more regenerations?" John asks.

"Usual way, you know. They needed me." She pulls the closet open, gives John a revised history of Gallifrey around the cracked door while she tosses clothes around for several minutes before finding something that seems acceptable.

"You look nice." John comments when she comes back out.

The Doctor smiles, then looks slightly surprised. " Oh, I like that. That's funny."

"Most girls do." John says.

"Well, aren't you foxy." The Doctor pokes him in the chest.

"So I've been told." John winks at her. "Speaking of which, I wonder where Rose has gotten off to?"

"All passengers please report to the console room."

Rose jerks awake, looks around in utter confusion at the bright, slightly tinny female voice that has risen above the pings, buzzes, and mechanical grunts from the video games surrounding her. She blinks hazily at the flat screens on the wall in front of her, one of them is playing a demo for what looks like a Mario Kart ripoff featuring amoeba, on the other street lights glow yellow under a haze of falling snow. Reality drifts together around her as she realizes where she is.

"Repeat, all passengers please report to the console room." The voice has the flat, forced enthusiasm of announcers the universe over.

Rose finds her way back to the front of the ship and stops at the door to the console room, finding herself vaguely nervous at the thought of this new Doctor. She can hear John laughing, though, and that makes her feel better.

The console room has shifted, and seems to have decorated itself for Christmas, there is a tree tucked into the corner by the stairs, topped with a cardboard Tardis that has quite obviously been made by a child. A red velvet loveseat and armchair have been arranged near one curving wall, a small table and lamp between them.

John is standing to stage left of the new console, he catches her eye and flashes a grin. "Oh, good, you're up."

The Doctor steps out from behind the console, and Rose is slightly surprised at how much she looks like, well, a _girl_. She'd known last night, of course, but the Doctor had been hidden under layers of ill fitting clothes and confusion. The hair has been pulled back and pinned now, the suit looks as though it's been tailored to her tall and narrow form, and she seems to exude an aura of bright competence. She looks like the sort of person you'd gravitate toward in an emergency.

"You alright?" The Doctor asks.

"Yeah, I just...you look like...you look like the Doctor." Rose manages.

"I'm not quite sure how I should take that." The Doctor laughs.

The Tardis hums, the Doctor looks around at the monitor, which is displaying the view outside

"Oh, oh my."

There is a man in a space suit standing in the snowy park, looking very out of place. Something moves behind him, one of the things that had attacked them, rising up out of the snow.

"Doctor!" Rose gasps.

"I see it." The Doctor says. "Looks like we're about to get a new friend."

She takes a few quick steps to the door, pulls it open, grabs the man in the space suit and tugs him through. Almost immediately the Tardis shudders again, sensors on the console begin to beep, the exterior video goes dead.

"What's happening?" Rose has to shout over the heavy throbbing of the struggling engine.

"Everything in a three mile radius is in flux, the city is moving!" The Doctor scrambles for the controls as thin plumes of acrid smoke begin to drift from the console.

The gravity in the room seems to go haywire, for several nauseating seconds they are being pulled uncertainly toward walls, floor, and ceiling in rapid succession. The ornaments on the tree sway and clink, the Christmas lights flash, Deck the Halls begins to play from nowhere in particular. The music is hitting it's second course of 'fa-la-la's when they settle again with a soft thump.

"Well, that pony has some fire in it. Everybody OK?" The Doctor flips on the exterior monitors as she comes around the console to check on her friends and the new arrival.

"Yeah, we're fine." John lets go of Rose, who tugs her shirt straight.

"How about you? Hello!" The Doctor strides over to address the man in the space suit, who is still sitting on the couch looking stunned. "You can take that helmet off, it's perfectly safe in here. Well, mostly safe."

He reaches up and unhooks the neck clasps, pulls the helmet off with a soft hiss of escaping gasses, holds it in his gloved hands looking at it with mild suspicion.

"Hi." The Doctor says brightly. "I'm the Doctor, this is Rose Tyler and John Smith."

"Dave." He puts the helmet down on the couch. "David Watson. What just happened?"

"You seem to have wandered into some sort of space-time bubble, same as these two." The Doctor nods toward John and Rose. "And now you're in my ship. The two are not generally connected."

"Is that what happened to the crew?"

"What crew?" The Doctor asks. "Where did you come from?"

"The SVSF Ontario. We were...exploring." Dave says. "This place, that town out there, was in the cargo bay."

"Really, now that's interesting." The Doctor says. "And the crew is gone, you say?"

"They vanished without a trace." Rose says. "Whole ship went missing."

The three others all turn to look at her.

"How in the world did you know that?" The Doctor asks.

"I pay attention." Rose smirks at her. "There's a thing, video article, about it in one of the magazines down in- hey, did you have kids in here?"

"What? Yes, on and off, why?" The Doctor arches an eyebrow at her.

"You have an arcade." Rose says.

"I do? Oh, yes, I do, I'd forgotten about that. Alright, so you were out looting space derelicts-"

"We're not looting, that vessel has been designated irrecoverable and is now considered public property under-"

"Ok, ok, you were 'exploring', then. And you found a town in the cargo bay."

"Pretty much, yeah. I thought it was...I don't know what I thought, maybe something malfunctioned. It wasn't the whole town, there was this sort of dome that had grown from this stuff, some sort of fungus or...no, I think it was more of those things that came up out of the snow, or something to do with them. I found some of it up in the log room, most of it was down in the cargo bay. Once I went in- to the dome, I mean- there just wasn't any way out, the wall or door or, I guess portal, vanished."

The Doctor nods. "Alright, that explains why my location readings were all hinky. We were, quite literally, in two completely different places and times, and, ah, not. I should have landed in 1920, which we apparently did, just in a rather bad spot. Or good one, depending on how you look at it."

"Ok, that explains how he got here, what about us?" Rose asks.

"The pocket exists between our dimensions, the places where they rub against eachother, for lack of a better term, is vulnerable to disruption. In this case, you two have ties to both myself and the Tardis, strong enough ones to permeate the barrier and let you pass through." The Doctor says.

Rose glances at John, who shrugs, _makes sense to me_.

"So, how do we get back?" This seems like the obvious next question.

"That depends on where exactly we are now, what that stuff is, and whether it can be manipulated. The first thing we're going to do, though, since I've got a single solid reading for our location, is see if we can move and have a look from the outside. I don't much fancy sitting in here with those things potentially out and about. You may want to hang onto something, this can get a bit hinky."

John comes over to the console by the Doctor. "Need a hand?"

The Doctor grins. "Love one."

Rose groans.

"Alright, we're going to pick up and set down just outside the area of disturbance." The Doctor says.

The engines engage easily now, the Tardis lifts herself with considerably more gentle buffeting, settles again and locks in place.

"I do not think we are where we wanted to be." The Doctor says.

"So, where are we?" Rose asks.

"Ahhh...I have no idea." The Doctor says "Exterior sensors are down. Should be safe enough to go have a look."

Rose walks over and pulls the door open, pokes her head out. After a moment she leans back in. "Some sort of museum."


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor and John Smith get to the door at the same time, he pulls it open and they peer out.

Dave's curiosity gets the better of him and he comes up to the door, they move so he can see and his mouth falls slightly open.

"I know this place." He says. "This is the Grand Museum at Ramatha on Terrat. I used to work here."

He steps through the door and looks around, they are in the back of a room with a partially disassembled exhibit on ancient Rome. As he looks at the dressed dummies and stuffed horses a strong sense of de'ja vu washes over him, he's been at this exact moment in time before. He had, in fact, removed the chariot from one of the horses and helped push it into the large wooden crate standing against one wall.

He is about to comment to this effect when he sees the Tardis from the outside again and is surprised to see that it looks like the police call box. Dave had just assumed he'd been teleported somehow, it had never occurred to him that the ship was actually inside the box.

Dave walks around the outside of the police call box, runs his gloved hand over the surface. The door is still open in the front, he steps back inside, it doesn't feel any different than walking through any other door, save for the shock of finding yourself in a place where proportions seem to have taken a vacation.

"It's bigger on the inside." Dave says.

"Yep." The Doctor grins at him.

"It's a tesseract." Dave says.

"It's a Tardis." The Doctor says. "Why don't you work here anymore?"

"Some stuff happened." Dave says. "You said you landed in 1920- I take it that means you can travel through time."

"Indeed." The Doctor nods.

"Well, I think this might be right around the time I left- it sounds silly but one of the horses from that display was destroyed, the white one there. We use- used- it for lots of displays. All the rest of them are mounted just standing there, you know, the way they do, this one is kinda half rearing up, really nice job. Supposedly it came from the court of Elizabeth I, but nobody actually has any paperwork to back that up." Dave realizes he's about to go into a history lecture and stops himself.

"That's certainly a possibility." The Doctor says. "And I believe this place is somehow connected with that town, or whatever was under the snow, I'm getting the same sort of readings."

"Hey," Dave says. "Hey! You're right! The crates in the cargo bay of the Ontario were from a reproduction village on Oraxacon Beta, if this is really the day I think it is then right now, upstairs, there is an exhibit on the Temple of MogDoth- which is located on Oraxacon Beta."

"There you go, then." The Doctor says. "The Tardis obviously considers this a more pressing issue."

"You talk like the ship is alive." Dave says.

"She is." The three others chorus, then look at eachother and laugh.

"Ok." Dave looks around. "Ok, sure, that makes sense I guess. You'd really need a living organism to move through time, wouldn't you, that's why we can't make a reliable time engine for a ship but we can send individual people through time using your brain as a processor."

The Doctor looks mildly impressed. "You're quite sharp."

"Thanks?" Dave says. "So, those things under the snow, and in the Ontario, they're here- I didn't see anything that looked like snakes or roots or fungus...but there are some funerary vessels up there that I remember thinking looked like eggs or spore."

"How big are these things?" The Doctor asks.

"Small, the size of human infants." He holds his hands about two feet apart.

"What's the security system like here?" The Doctor asks.

"It's primarily motion detectors, sends an automatic signal to local law enforcement or emergency services if it's tripped. But it was real buggy for awhile, it kept going off for no reason and they finally had to shut it down. It was off for three days I think before something happened, destruction of property, some major theft."

"Is that why you left?" The Doctor asks.

"Ah, sort of, not really, it was sort of connected. During the investigation I was cataloging items for insurance and found a bunch of stuff had been replaced with reproductions, when I brought it up they suddenly found some inconsistencies in my record keeping, stuff I knew I'd put in right but my paper backups went missing."

"I see." The Doctor nods. "Well, why don't you two go see what you can find out about the security system, and we'll go up and check out this temple stuff. Here, take this-" She tosses the sonic screwdriver to John.

"Security room?" John asks Dave.

"Out there, up and to the left, all the way down. It's got key-card entry."

"Yeah, I think I can manage to get in." John flashes Rose a brilliant smile, does a little dance in place. "Come on, lets go get into trouble."

He grabs her by the hand and practically drags her through the door, the Doctor's laughter following them.

She pins her eyes on Dave. "Alright, where are we going?"

"Third floor." He leads the way up a wide staircase, the lobby on the second floor has an information desk with an assembled fossil T-Rex looming over it, mouth open.

The lights on the third floor are flickering, casting dancing shadows in the galleries to the sides, to the left an exhibit featuring extinct animals native to area around the temple, to the right dummies wear ritual clothing. Ahead of them the MogDoth temple exhibit is cloaked flickering darkness.

As they approach a shaft of light appears and Dave looks sharply over at the Doctor, who is shining a flashlight into the darkness.

"Where did you get that?" He asks.

"Had it in my pocket." The Doctor says.

"But-"

"Shoosh." The Doctor hushes him. "I have all sorts of stuff in my pockets."

"But there isn't room-"

"Oh, for the love of- I have a spaceship inside a little wooden box, you really think I can't manage pockets that are bigger on the inside? Now hush, they'll hear you."

"Who will hear me?"

"Whoever's here to hear." She says in a stage whisper.

As if on cue there is the clatter of breaking pottery from the darkness before them. The Doctor swings the light that way but their view is blocked by a line of large display cases.

"You don't happen to have a gun in there, do you?" Dave murmurs.

"Nope. Never carry one." She shakes her head. "Not my style."

"What do you do if someone attacks you?"

"I improvise." The Doctor shrugs.

Stepping into the exhibit is like stepping into a cave, the darkness seems to close in behind them. There is another crackle of breaking clay, followed by a soft scraping sound, as though something is sliding the broken pieces around on the floor.

They step into the main exhibit area, set to resemble the interior of the temple. Dave gets another tug of memory.

"It looks like the storage bay, where I found you." Dave says. "There was this stuff growing out of containers, it made a dome like this, up over the town. I knew it looked familiar."

Before the Doctor can respond there is another scraping sound, and she swings the beam of the light over. One of the pedestals is conspicuously empty. She moves the light down the column, focuses it on the base.

Something moves just on the other side of the pedestal The Doctor steps sideways, shifting position to allow the light to penetrate.

"Oh my." She says quietly.

The door to the security room is closed but not locked, John and Rose find it lit by the dull glow of monitors, most of which are locked on the Blue Screen of Death. Only three of the monitors are showing picture, one is pointed directly at the closed front door, one shows a large room filled with the assembled skeletons of more extinct predators like the one they'd seen over the reception desk, the third is from a camera mounted somewhere behind a collection of what looks like rough pottery.

John gets down under the control desk and starts checking connections, pops out a moment later. "Looks fine here, the problem must be somewhere in the lines."

Rose steps forward, trying to make out the details of the third video. The lights in the exhibit flicker and she can see a row of fairly oval vessels, the clay hatched across the front to create the vague impression of an infant wrapped in a blanket. The walls of the hall look like arching trees or vines, similar enough to the things they'd seen in the cargo bay to make her uncomfortable.

The lights flicker again, and she thinks she sees one of the pots move. She leans in close to the monitor, staring at the vessel. It shakes again and now she sees a crack appear in the surface.

"John?" She says. "You better come see this."

He presses in close to her, glasses balanced on his nose, watching as the crack widens, the vase shakes again and then topples over off of the pedestal and vanishes into the shadows on the floor. John narrows his eyes, points the screwdriver at the monitor and tweaks the brightness and contrast. It doesn't completely clear the picture but now they can see that the vessel on the floor has cracked like an egg, and something is hatching from it. A cluster of thin tentacles like a grasping hand.

"Where is that- Right where they're headed, of course." He makes a frustrated noise. "Why doesn't the Doctor carry a phone?"

"Welcome to my world." Rose says.

"Keep an eye on that." He says. "I'm going to try and figure out what's up with the rest of these monitors."

He finds a blueprint of the system in a filing cabinet and finds, to very little surprise, that the wiring for the three functional monitors all runs down the same conduit.

"Ah, well, that makes sense-" He mutters.

"What?"

"See this here? The main switchbox for the security system is on the other side of this wall, that's the exhibit on the monitor there." He points, not bothering to see if Rose is looking at him. "These three must have been put in later, their wiring is different."

"So, whatever that thing is, there are more of them and they've gotten into the wall." Rose says.

"Most likely, yes." John says.

A shaft of light appears on the monitor, sweeps along, when it moves away Rose can see two figures are coming into the picture. "They're up there. The Doctor and Dave."

The thing in the shadows seems to sense them, stoppins it's random waving and shifts in the general direction of the new arrivals.

John is still messing with one of the control panels. He makes a little satisfied noise, pops up above the counter and presses a few buttons on a keyboard.

"John- you better come see this." Rose says.

The lights in the exhibit come up abruptly, the Doctor and Dave both step back as they see that several dozen of the round vessels have broken open and are now crawling around on the floor. There is a hole in the wall at the rear of the exhibit.

"What's on the other side of that wall?" The Doctor asks quietly.

"Maintenance room." Dave murmurs back.

The tentacled creatures seem to have been temporarily dazzled by the light, but now several start to move toward them menacingly.

"What do we do?" Dave asks.

"Ah- run." The Doctor says, grabbing his hand and pulling him into motion with surprising strength.

They duck around a wall and into the room of preserved native animals.

"Watch the door." The Doctor instructs, heading toward the far right wall which adjoins the corrupted temple room.

There is a glass fronted display built into the wall which houses group of creatures that look rather like a cross between insects and dinosaurs. The plaque on the wall beside them reads "Ropsopthian Terror Mouth Beast, Ropsopthia, Oraxacon Beta".

The display is secured with a simple key lock, the Doctor pats her pockets then hisses when she remembers she doesn't have the screwdriver. She narrows her eyes as if trying to break the lock by sheer force of will, then brightens when she realizes she has an appropriate tool on her person. She tugs several pins out of her hair and slides them into the key slot, feeling for the subtle shift when she finds the tumblers that need to move. The lock releases with a soft click, turns and the bolt slides free from it's home in the wall.

"Ha!" She pulls the glass door open and steps up into the display.

The back wall looks like it's solid, she taps on it in several places and finds what sounds like a metal girder.

With her head in this position she is looking directly down the back wall of the display, to the grass and scrub brush that has been used to conceal the join between wall and floor. She sees something in the dry plants, something brown and oval shaped, made of rough clay.

The Doctor walks over and picks it up. A clay vessel like they ones they'd seen in the MogDoth exhibit, broken into three pieces and empty.

As she realizes what it is, one of the the creatures slowly turns it's head to look at her. It's six nostrils flare as it smells the air. For a breathless moment she stares into the things eyeless face, then it's skull opens up into a massive mouth and it lunges. The Doctor bolts forward along the wall, toward the thing, escaping the strike and scrambling around behind the animal as it tries to turn in the enclosed area.

She jumps free of the display as the other creature animates, the first one has gotten it's bearings now and they both leap out just after her.

"What the-" Dave doesn't have time to finish, she grabs his arm and pulls him around the corner back out into the main hall.

"It's...reanimated them somehow." The Doctor says. "MogDoth."

"Reanimated in what way, exactly?"

"They're alive. Biological. Look, it drooled on me." The Doctor holds out her arm.

"Oh, great, so now we have a couple of Terror-Mouth Beasts running around the museum?" Dave groans.

"Yep."

"So what are we gonna do?"

Several of the MogDoth creatures have come out into the open and are moving toward them. The Doctor looks at the crawling eggs, back at the hissing and roaring coming from the room behind them. She scans the area, sees that several of the clay vessels have rolled out and are shaking slightly but have not yet opened.

The Doctor moves, and the things shift with her. She takes a few steps to the left and they reorient. The creatures are cautious of attacking but focused on her.

"How's your sprint in that thing?" The Doctor asks, nodding at his atmospheric suit.

"Pretty good. What are you thinking?"

"I need one of those eggs. If I can distract these things, think you can nip in and grab one?"

He nods, looks around and finds three near the door that he can probably get at. "Yeah. Ready when you are."

She slips her jacket off and tosses it to him. "Don't let it grab you. Ok- Go."

The Doctor steps out, waves her arms. "Hey! Look at me! I'm a distraction! Distraction! Distraction! Wooo!"

Dave runs for the nearest egg with a clear path, pounces on it and wraps it in the jacket, scrambles to his feet. The other eggs are starting to converge on the Doctor, who waves her hands at Dave to hurry up.

The Terror Mouth Beasts come charging out of the room right in front of him, Dave slams on the breaks, skids under one of the creatures, the egg still tightly clutched to his chest. The Doctor grabs his arm, pulling him to his feet as the other eggs hesitate. The Terror Mouth Beasts focus on them again, turn to attack.

"Aaaaah, we're gonna dieee!" The Doctor howls, grabs the bundle from Dave and shoulders him toward the stairs. "Run, boy!"

The animals hesitate at the stairs, hiss and growl at eachother apparently trying to decide who should take the unfamiliar footing first.

The Doctor feels the bundle in her arms fighting with the constraint. Halfway down the stairs she grabs the arms of her coat and slings it around, flinging the egg up into the fossil T-Rex over the counter. It shatters, the tendrils come shooting out and adhere to the dinosaurs spine, begin to work themselves up and down it's length with unsettling speed.

John and Rose come running up the stairs, attracted by the commotion.

"What's going on?" Rose asks, looking at the Doctor and Dave who are both slightly winded. "What are those things!"

"Terror mouth beasts...T-Rex" The Doctor points at the skeleton, which is rapidly being covered with strands of the substance from the egg.

"T-Rex?" John echoes, looking up at it. "T-Rex!"

The desk explodes as the dinosaur falls from the ceiling. The tyrannosaurus is almost fully formed, spiky pins appear on it's small arms and along it's tail and crest as it finds it's feet, erupt into primitive feathers.

The animal looks around, turns slowly and spots the group. It tilts it's head from side to side, trying to decide if they are worth attacking, but before it can make up it's mind the Terror Mouth Beasts come charging down the stairs, see the Rex and slam on the breaks.

They three predators stand for several seconds, sizing eachother up, then the Terror Mouth Beasts scream and leap at the T-Rex, who roars and thunders fearlessly towards them.

"Yeah, get a load of Big Mama! Go get 'em, Sue!" The Doctor cheers.

"What did you do!?" John shouts over the cacophony of animal sounds and scrabbling claws on tile.

"Hey, they started it!" The Doctor calls back.

The T-Rex manages to grab one of the Terror Mouth Beasts by it's spine, snaps it's head back and forth and then throws the still twitching carcass. The body strikes a column hard enough to crack the stone, slides limply to the floor.

"What do you mean they started it?" Rose asks.

"I mean they- watch it!" The Doctor waves the group back as the remaining Terror Mouth Beast skids past.

The animal picks itself up, sees them and charges but before it has gone more than three steps the T-Rex snatches it up, slams it into the floor and stomps on it with one hind foot, pining the creature before darting it's head down and ripping it apart.

"Aww, she's hungry." The Doctor says as the dinosaur's jaws move.

Rose winces and turns away. "Yuck."

"Um, Doc?" Dave says.

"Hm?" She's still watching the T-Rex with a slight smile on her face.

"I don't want to be a downer here, but didn't you just switch one alpha predator out for another? What are we gonna do about the T-Rex?"

"Ah..."

Rose nudges her arm. "It's- looking at us."

The T-Rex has lifted it's nose, it sniffs the air, takes a cautious step toward them.

The Doctor walks forward, holding her hand out. Dave feels a jolt of fear for her, but John and Rose don't seem worried.

"Hey there, Mama." The Doctor murmurs. "You're in an interesting predicament, aren't you?"

The dinosaur lowers it's huge head and sniffs her hand, makes a soft noise in it's throat.

"Thank you for helping us." The Doctor says. "I'll get you home safe, I promise."

John approaches, scratches the animal under the stiff feathers of her jaw.

"I can't believe- are they really petting a T-Rex?" Dave asks.

Rose laughs. "Yeah. They're actually not all that aggressive. And besides, the Doctor can talk to animals."

The T-Rex has lost interest in the Doctor, approaches Rose and sniffs at her in a determined fashion.

"What are you after?" Rose laughs, pushing it's head away.

"I think you have candy in your pocket." The Doctor says.

Rose fishes around and finds a mint and unwraps it, the T-Rex opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue. Still laughing, Rose drops the candy onto the wet pink surface and it is immediately sucked in.

Dave reaches out cautiously to touch the animal. The dinosaurs skin is warm with a softly pebbled surface where it isn't covered in primitive feathers.

"How many animal fossils and specimens do you have here?" John asks Dave.

"Five, six thousand maybe. Most of them are small, birds and insects, stuff like that. Maybe fifteen hundred larger animal skeletons and taxidermy. So, that stuff actually brings things back to life?"

"It's a temporal organism, it feeds on and presumably excretes time energy. If this stuff spreads we're going to have more problems than a dinosaur. We need to stop it infecting anything else. And since the Tardis just had to deal with that stuff she's got an immune response, we just need to provide exposure. Where's the tank for the sprinklers I'm seeing?"

"On the roof."

"Perfect. Come on, into the Tardis."

They hurry back through to the room where they left Tardis, the T-Rex padding along behind them.

"What are you gonna do with that thing?" Dave asks.

"Sue? We'll take her with us for the time being. Make sure she's not carrying this stuff and drop her off on Earth in the Cretaceous where she belongs. "

"How? She won't fit through the door."

"Oh ye of little faith." The Doctor says brightly.

They are almost to the Tardis when Sue growls sharply. They all stop, look around. There is a subtle sound, the scrape of clay on tile.

"They're heeere." The Doctor sings.

Eggs are creeping in from the corners of the room, crawling like crabs with their tentacles.

Something brushes Dave's leg and he jumps, yelping in surprise and bolting forward as he realizes the things have closed in around behind them, penning them in. The T-Rex snorts and growls, she isn't designed to deal with so many small targets at once and they make her nervous.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do. We are going to distract those things. John Smith, get to the Tardis, take care of this stuff somehow."

John nods. "Right."

"Wait, won't those things kill us or...whatever...in the time it takes him to do anything? We don't have any weapons, unless you count the dinosaur." Dave protests.

"We have the Tardis. He has all the time in the world."

Several of the eggs rush at them, apparently getting impatient. They have encircled the Tardis, leaving the front clear. One of them strikes out at Sue, who yelps as if stung and takes several steps forward, turns to look at the Doctor as though for instruction.

"Ok, you ready?" The Doctor asks.

John nods.

The Doctor pulls a pen knife out of her pocket and before any of them realize what she is doing has driven the blade into her hand. She hisses, cups her hand momentarily then flings her open palm out toward the creeping creatures. Dave expects there to be a spray of blood but instead it's as though the Doctor is full of light.

The eggs immediately react, rushing toward them, clearing the sides of the Tardis.

John forces himself to bolt without looking back, hits the door and jams the key home, doesn't stop until he has locked it again. He smiles, pats the console and shifts the Tardis, half expecting her to stall and feeling a rush of relief when her engines immediately turn over.

As the eggs rush at them the Tardis goes bright, begins to make it's distinctive sound. The creatures all turn and reorient themselves but it's to late, the ship vanishes as they converge on the place it had just been.

The sprinkler system activates along with the emergency lights.

The water that spills out has an odd smell, but seems otherwise normal. The eggs are still moving, though they are having trouble getting traction on the slick floor. One of them loses it's grip and falls, slides toward them on sheer momentum. It skids to a stop a few feet away, tentacles waving weakly, then goes limp.

"It's working!" Rose shouts as more of the eggs collapse.

Within minutes the room has gone still except for the now slowing spray from the sprinkler system.

The Tardis materializes in the main lobby as the last of the liquid drizzles out of the roof top tank and emergency sirens can be heard approaching.

"Think it's time we took our leave of the museum" The Doctor says. "I hate filling out paperwork."

John opens the door, leans out. "Building's clear, of that stuff at least. I'm getting half a dozen life signs but I suggest we let the locals sort that out. Oh, hello Arthur!"

The large white horse has walked up from the side, pins his ears back at the T-Rex until the dinosaur backs away looking cowed. He sniffs the Doctor, who pulls his head up and kisses him on the cheek.

"Good boy. Ok, in, in, everybody in." The Doctor waves them forward.

Rose gives John a peck on the cheek as she walks past. "My hero."

Dave steps into the console room and turns around, intending to ask if the Doctor was serious about the T-Rex and finds Sue's head looming in front of him. He takes several steps backward, looking around, there isn't room in here for the dinosaur regardless of whether it can get through the door.

But then she is in the console room, which seems to have somehow gotten bigger to allow the animal freedom of movement. The horse, he sees, is trotting off through the door at the back of the room.

"Is that- that's not your horse, is it?" Dave says.

"Arthur? Yeah, he is, as a matter of fact. Lost him a long time ago. Well, I say lost, he was actually kidnapped and replaced with a shape-shifting alien. Good horse, not surprised he got himself stuffed in the end."

"But how...I don't understand what just happened." Dave says. "How did it do that?"

"It's a temporal organism, it reanimates things by running them back along their timeline. You don't just get a horse, you get _that_ horse. Through exactly what mechanism I'm not sure, but we're going to find out."

As the Doctor is setting a new course, Sue shakes off like a dog, spraying the room down.

"Ha, now you're all wet, too." Rose laughs at John.

The Fire and Emergency response teams converge on the Grand Museum at Ramatha on Terrat as the engine sounds are fading. Exterior scans show the building undisturbed with no suspiciously heated areas.

"Looks like we might have a false alarm." One of the fire responders comments, triggering the front door. He takes a cautious step inside, hears a noise to his left and turns.

"Um, boss? I think you should come have a look at this."

The stegosaurus in the main lobby blinks at him placidly and takes another bite from the potted fern by the door.


End file.
